The Anatomy of Bad Reporting in Microsoft Excel 2007

I detest bad reports, that is my motivation for writing this article.

From my previous experience training professionals to efficiently use Excel and also helping organizations to develop templates and custom reports, I find some common issues and mistakes users make when using Excel

• Submitting a report with Errors like #NAME? #DIV/0 - There is nothing as your manager, board or CEO receiving a report with errors for examples calculated when you divide a number by Zero (0). At some point when dealing with data, you may find yourself having to divide a number by a blank cell (for cases where you are making comparison with historical data which are not available.

         Solution: Use the formula =IFERROR("the calculation goes here", "value to return if error")

• Cells that have not been adjusted to fit to contents (#####) - If the data you are working on can't fit into one cell, you should consider right clicking on the actual cell or entire report then set the column width. In Excel 2007 Go to Home > Format > AutoFit column width and Autofit row height. 
• Not giving names to your excel sheets and workbooks. Basic versioning principles require users to document their workbooks and worksheets. 
• Submitting a report with no Headers & Footers: Use the headers and footers tool to add page numbers, report author, report date and other details 
• Reports whose spellings have not been checked: In Microsoft Word, it is easy to identify where spelling mistakes occur, but in Microsoft Excel use the function key F7 to activate the spell checker. 
• This is not the final one but, please put titles on your charts, and remember to label the X and Y axis